CICS was looong time ago...
Posted on 09/17/2019 2:54:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
COBOL is celebrating 60 years since its specifications were signed off. Darling of Y2K consultants, the language is rapidly approaching pensionable age, but many a greybeard owes their career to it.
It arose from a desire to create a language that could straddle the computers of the era. Each manufacturer had its own way of working, which, while OK if a company always stuck with one maker, made portability of programs or skills a tad tricky.
If only there was, say, a COmmon Business-Oriented Language? Wouldn't that be splendid?
Mary Hawes, a programmer of Burroughs machines, put forward a proposal in 1959 that users and manufacturers create a common language that could run on different computers and handle tasks such as payroll calculation and record keeping. The US Department of Defense (DoD), which tended to buy computers from different makers, took an interest and sponsored a meeting in May of that year to kick off the creation of the language.
Having found the then two-year-old FORTRAN not quite to its taste, the DoD was keen on an alternative and the target date of September was set for a specification for an interim language, a stopgap that would become COBOL.
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Today’s script kiddie snowflake coders can’t handle the error messages spit out from a compiler ... and get off my lawn !
Once you’ve learned a half dozen or so programming languages, it just doesn’t matter any more.
As a hobbyist, I coded in Basic, Assembler (Z80/6800), APL, and Ada, then wrote my first CoBOL program and started that as a job on a really awful Vax/VMS system.
Nowadays, I just wait patiently for Brainf*ck to catch on... ;)
"BALR" - Sounds like something Biden or Kamala might put on their resume.
I learned Fortran, Basic, and C, and Assembler in school, in that order. Assembler was the most difficult being low level and needing to understand the architecture of the microprocessor. Gave me fits sometimes.
I made that suggestion to my wife, who was a COBOL programmer. She has no interest in going back to work.
Truth!!!
The question is, do these "greybeards" today have to know JES3/JCL to run the COBOL, or does it run on PC servers now?
//PJ DD DUMMY
I wrote assembler for several banks shaving pennies off for them. If I had been a crook I would be rich as this was the early 80s. Knowing what I know now about those ass-wipes I should have been a crook.
ugh i’m dealing with leftover visual fox pro
And waiting ...
CICS was looong time ago...
Started with Burroughs in 1981, learned a little Cobol while there doing mainframe support.
Recently I saw job listing in Detroit, that wanted someone with Burroughs/Unisys A-Series Cobol and DMS II experience.
Unisys was what Burroughs became after they merged with Sperry-Univac....I supported Cobol and DMS II which was their Database system when I left Burrougs in the early 1990s......
I was a FORTRAN jockey in the late 60’s. COBOL programmers were referred to as cobblers.
I learned on Assembler, COBOL, Fortran77, and C++.
Talk about old.
I’m set for Y3K. Those whippersnappers will come at me waving money. If money still exists.
I think you mean...
000250* Comments?
Not with COBOL II. You only need a period before leaving a routine 8>)
Is there a good one? I hated the crap outta that.
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